Offices Held

Biography

As recorder of Southampton and counsellor of Salisbury John Penruddock maintained houses at both places; and after the death of his uncle Robert in 1583 he made the manor house of Hale, situated between them, his country residence. His eldest son Thomas probably passed much of his boyhood in one or other of these homes, although the description ‘of Arkelby’ given him when he matriculated at Oxford suggests that he may have been sent for schooling to this, the original home of the family, which had come to his father by gift from Robert and which lay within a few miles of his mother’s home at Lamplugh. He was enrolled very young at Gray’s Inn, where his father was reader, and where his brother Manwood followed him eight years later. No doubt his father wished his sons to be given the benefit of a legal education under his own eye.3

Penruddock was only 23 when his father died early in 1601, and from then on he had the dual responsibility of administering his own estate and of helping his mother, who survived her husband 13 years, in launching the younger of her nine children, whose ages ranged down to nine. Within a few months of his father’s death Penruddock was returned to Parliament for Downton. As the new master of Hale, some two miles south of Downton, Penruddock had a good local claim, but this would scarcely have prevailed without the reinforcement of influence. Such influence the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, who like Penruddock had recently succeeded his father, may have furnished, for the Penruddocks had a long record of service to and favours from Wilton. There is also the possibility that Sir Robert Cecil lent Penruddock his support; Cecil was to receive a New Year’s gift from ‘Mr. Penrudock’ (either Robert or Thomas) at Christmas 1602.4

Penruddock was to sit in Parliament once again. His knighthood, at James I’s coronation, he received in the presence of his brother Manwood and his cousins Edward and Robert, as well as of over 400 other persons. He died in 1637, being succeeded at Hale by his son John.5